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Monday, July 24, 2017

The crisis

Correct me if I'm straying from the facts, but the 4300–3800 YBP date mentioned in this new paper at Eurasian Soil Science, on the "catastrophic aridization" of the steppes in the Lower Volga region, is roughly the time when big, tall, round headed folks rich in Yamnaya-related ancestry basically hijack the Beaker phenomenon, and just before the collapse of the Indus Valley Civilization and, according to most sane people, the arrival of Indo-Europeans in South Asia. Coincidence?

Abstract: Diagnostic features of a catastrophic aridization of climate, desertification, and paleoecological crisis in steppes of the Lower Volga region have been identified on the basis of data on the morphological, chemical, and microbiological properties of paleosols under archeological monuments (burial mounds) of the Middle Bronze Age. These processes resulted in a certain convergence of the soil cover with transformation of zonal chestnut (Kastanozems) paleosols and paleosolonetzes (Solonetz Humic) into specific chestnut-like eroded saline calcareous paleosols analogous to the modern brown desert-steppe soils (Calcisols Haplic) that predominated in this region 4300–3800 years ago. [1] In the second millennium BC, humidization of the climate led to the divergence of the soil cover with secondary formation of the complexes of chestnut soils and solonetzes. This paleoecological crisis had a significant effect on the economy of the tribes in the Late Catacomb and Post-Catacomb time stipulating their higher mobility and transition to the nomadic cattle breeding.

Interesting that deterioration had already begun around 2800 B.C. and then Shishlina also shows abrupt aridization around 2300 B.C. In any case, it seems clear that the steppe had become unsustainable, and probably overpopulated at that.

This period (2200BC) falls in the late catacomb period. Kurgans had all but ended in the west -in Hungary & in the Balkans. And this is when the Andronovo community is said to have expanded across EurAsia, and the Kurgans appear in Armenia. So we are definitely seeing a shift of steple communities to the south and southeast

Re: Beakers there's an interesting difference in thesis on Central European Bell Beaker ancestry between Olalde's thesis and the paper:

Olalde's thesis - http://www.tdx.cat/handle/10803/403608: "First, we modelled the BBC groups from Iberia and France that had no evidence of steppe ancestry based on the qualitative analyses (BB_Iberia_Cer, BB_Iberia_Alm, BB_Iberia_Arr1 and BB_France_Heg) as a mixture of Anatolia_Neolithic populations and Western hunter-gatherers (WHG) representing the indigenous people of Europe4. All these groups fit the model (P > 0.18), with BB_France_Heg showing less WHG ancestry than Iberian groups (Table 1). In light of these findings, we tested for genetic continuity in Iberia between BBC (taking BB_Iberia_Cer as representative) and preceding Middle Neolithic and Chalcolithic populations. Symmetry tests using f4- statistics (Fig. 4a-b) indicate that they are consistent with descending from a common ancestral population with no external immigration, an inference that is also supported by shared genetic drift analysis using outgroup-f3 statistics (Fig. 4c). The finding that the Iberian BBC are genetically continuous with the preceding and contemporary non-BBC cultures is consistent with the proposed origin of the BBC in the Iberian Peninsula5–7,31."

We next examined the ancestry of BBC samples with steppe affinities. PCA (Fig. 2a), ADMIXTURE (Fig. 2b) and the statistic f4(Chimp, Test; Yamnaya_Samara, Anatolia_Neolithic) (Fig. 3a) show that many individuals in the study are genetically close to individuals attributed to the CWC, but differ from them in having less steppe-related ancestry (e.g. f4(Chimp, Yamnaya_Samara;Corded_Ware_Germany, BB_France_Mon) = -0.0015, Z = -4.48)) (Supplementary Table 5). We used qpAdm2 to show that they can be well modelled as a mixture of Corded_Ware_Germany and a Neolithic farmer population without steppe-related ancestry (Fig. 3b, Supplementary Table 6), which could be either local (e.g. central European Middle Neolithic) or Iberian Bell Beaker; our analyses do not have enough resolution to distinguish these scenarios. Thus, a substantial proportion of the Central European BBC (and possibly up to 100%) was local in origin, showing how the movement of the BBC into central Europe to a large extent reflected movement of ideas.

...

Therefore, assuming a Late Neolithic origin in Iberia (the most widely accepted hypothesis based on radiocarbon dates) for the Bell Beaker complex, a putative expansion from Iberia to Central Europe mediated by extensive migration will be difficult to track genetically, as Iberian Late Neolithic people did not harbor any characteristic genetic component that was not present in Central Europe. This does not mean that Iberian and Central European Neolithic farmers lacked any genetic differentiation, but that such differentiation was quite subtle and difficult to detect using common methods such as PCA, ADMIXTURE or f-statistics that rely on unlinked genetic variants. For instance, a possible source of subtle differentiation could be different affinity to La Braña 1 Iberian hunter-gatherer, likely higher in Late Neolithic Iberia than in Central Europe. To identify fine-scale genetic structure, haplotype-based information obtained from phased diploid calls would be required (Leslie et al. 2015).

Furthermost Bell Beaker samples from Central Europe presented less steppe ancestry and more Neolithic farmer ancestry than Corded Ware people, who slightly preceded Bell Beakers in those areas and spread via massive migration from the steppe (Haak et al. 2015). This extra amount of Neolithic farmer ancestry could have an origin in Central Europe, where it was predominant before the arrival of steppe immigrants. Alternatively, it could have been introduced by Iberian Bell Beakers, who also carried this type of ancestry, through migration out of Iberia and admixture with the Corded Ware. As mentioned before, distinguishing between the two hypotheses is quite difficult because Iberian and Central European farmers were genetically very similar (see, for instance, figures 2a and 2b in section 4.4).

In my opinion, future efforts on the genetic characterization of the Bell Beaker phenomenon should focus on three aspects: gathering data from poorly represented areas in our study, recovering high coverage genomes for fine-structure analyses and obtaining insights into temporal dynamics through the study of individuals dated to different phases within the Bell Beaker period at a given region The paper: Conversely, the Neolithic farmer-related ancestry in Beaker Complex individuals outside Iberia was most closely related to central and northern European Neolithic populations with relatively high hunter-gatherer admixture (e.g. Globular_Amphora_LN, P = 0.14; TRB_Sweden_MN, P = 0.29), and we could significantly exclude Iberian sources (P < 3.18E-08) (Fig. 2c). These results support largely different origins for Beaker Complex individuals, with no discernible Iberia-related ancestry outside Iberia.

Olalde's very agnostic about whether an Iberian Bell Beaker+Corded Ware like fusion could lead to Central European Bell Beaker in his thesis, and generally much more agnostic about the potential to model between Iberian and Central European farmer ancestry without haplotypes. While the paper essentially does not test Corded Ware+ models (which I found odd!), and is a lot more confident in what can be determined via f-stats and Yamnaya+Neolithic models.

The preprint paper has a lot more data, but on the other hand, I wonder if this is as much to do with more data, or the paper is more influenced by multiple authors, and whether some degree of interpretational "arm wrestling" has affected how long the paper is taking to publish (e.g. in part whether Olalde thinks a Yamnaya+Globular Amphora MN model is not a seriously overwhelming slam dunk model for Central European Bell Beaker).

@ MattThe problem is the idea of (archaeological origins) of BB in Iberia is somewhat dubious.Even in accepting the early (27/2600 BC) dates for BB in some Portuguese sites, they are still younger than the arrival of CWC in Netherlands and Jura region, and look as intrusive communities.

"Significantly exclude" isn't very agnostic. Rarecoal in the Irish paper said likely straight from Germany with no Iberian input as well. That is the rare allele sharing that would've been more of a slam dunk here.

When did horses (not ponies) arrive in Ireland ? And chariots certainly looks like a very late arrival in Ireland during the ADs....?

Did R1b L51 migrate along the Danube from Romania or were they displaced in Southwestern Ukraine/Southeastern Poland then migrated through Slovakia to Csepel in Hungary and only from there migrated up the Danube and eventually the Elbe ?

Modern mtDNA, not just ancient DNA, indicates many mHGs originated and expanded out of Iran/Caucasus area relatively recently.

Actually it looks like mtDNA J1, W, and N1a1 *may* *may* have originated somewhere around Iran. If EEF is part something similar to Iran Neo then maybe EEF got J1c, W1, and N1a1a from Iran Neolithic-like groups.

Also, I have pretty irrefutable evidence now that European mtDNA is mostly EEF.

Sure, that's the point i was making; that comes from the paper, and there is a big difference in the way the subject of assigning ancestry from European MN populations into Centraul European Bell Beaker is treated between Olalde's thesis and the preprint.

There are new methods and many more samples in the preprint, but I found that the comments in Olalde's thesis seem generally sensible to me; if they've been purely superceded by the paper, strange that there is no discussion of e.g. Corded_Ware+French_MN / Corded_Ware+Iberian_Bell Beaker, models in the paper.

I speculate that this may be because there is a difference in one author and a multi-author setup, and that may have something to do with the delay of the paper. But that is just speculation only.

(Possibly he has been so completely persuaded since his thesis that f statistics via Yamnaya+European_MN combinations completely solve the problem, and simply they felt no need to talk about any of the same questions in the preprint.)

Rarecoal in the Irish paper said likely straight from Germany with no Iberian input as well.

I can't see any mention of rarecoal in Cassidy et al 2016, the Irish paper, just using a find function on the text for the words "rarecoal" and "rare". "Allele sharing" is in the supplement, but only in the context of f statistics, not rare alleles. Can you point me to it or quote it?

Rob: The problem is the idea of (archaeological origins) of BB in Iberia is somewhat dubious.

Even in accepting the early (27/2600 BC) dates for BB in some Portuguese sites, they are still younger than the arrival of CWC in Netherlands and Jura region, and look as intrusive communities.

Possibly this has an influence on why those bits from Olalde's thesis are not in the final paper then?

Though @Rob, even if earliest Corded Ware were preceding earliest BB culture sites in Portugal (and that presents the idea that perhaps early BB was a purely cultural diffusion to Iberia, not originating there), that doesn't mean it much more makes sense to model Bell Beaker as a Yamnaya+European MN synthesis rather than involving Central European CWC, necessarily.

"Possibly this has an influence on why those bits from Olalde's thesis are not in the final paper then?"

Maybe . But my opinion is (currently) that held by a minority of archaeologists. The rest simply rest at "BB came from Portugal" despite being aware of typological precedents from Dutch Corded ware (specifically PFB and AOC).

"that doesn't mean it much more makes sense to model Bell Beaker as a Yamnaya+European MN synthesis rather than involving Central European CWC, necessarily."

If it's possible to discern the difference of a CWC vs Yamnaya input ?The "steppe" part of Central European BB could still be from a Yamnaya group rather than German BB; although in reality it might be a more complex 4 -way mix

From what I get the Anatolian part of MN farmers is so alike that hardly any, or better, no population structure can be discerned and therefore the differences between Iberian and Central European farmers are entirely due to the HG admixtures these have. Now we know that La Brana is different from Loschbour as a number of papers have shown it to be admixted with probably Iberian Magalenians. More so than Loschbour.

But that raises the question that the fit with GAC is simply because they are the most admixted MN farmers. At least, if we exclude little exceptions such as Blättershöhle. So it might very well be that the fit Olale et al finds simply means there is more WHG in BB than can be explained from mere MN farmer amixture. We know that pockets of higher WHG amixture existed, such as Blättershöhle, en we may safely assume that Vlaaringen culture had higher admixture as well as it seems an offshoot of Swifterbant.

Combine that with what Chad mentions and I think there is a lot to be said for a German and Dutch origin hypothesis.

It seems there was a lot of geographical turmoil in the era preceeding the Bronze Age. Aridification of the Steppe and the flooding of Doggerland. I think it's a possibility that the yamnaya-like ancestry in Beakers is coming from a population leaving a flooding Doggerland, and that population would be about 50% WHG and 50% yamnaya-like.

Uniparental markers confirm the connection between Yamnaya, Bell Beaker, and Corded Ware is recent. Nothing but migration from the Steppe into Europe can explain their recent common mtDNA/Y DNA ancestors.

"It seems there was a lot of geographical turmoil in the era preceeding the Bronze Age. Aridification of the Steppe and the flooding of Doggerland. I think it's a possibility that the yamnaya-like ancestry in Beakers is coming from a population leaving a flooding Doggerland, and that population would be about 50% WHG and 50% yamnaya-like."

So did L51 spread up the Danube from the Delta or did it reach the Danube from the North via Southwestern Ukraine and Northwestern Romania/Slovakia ?

Did L51 split up near the Eastern Carpathians with one group migrating to Anatolia and the other migrating along the Northern side of the Carpathians only to be pushed Southwards into Hungary/Csepel by the GAC or Corded Ware expansions and then only migrate up the Danube and eventually down the Elbe ?

Was the Tripolye Culture influenced enough by Steppe Culture to adopt a migratory lifestyle and maybe show a "false" truely Steppe related migration into the Balkans ?

Romulu said"I thought the Yamnaya didn't have round heads, same for CWC? Ive only heard of it in BBC and Neolithic Steppe. Always assumed the CHG ancestry changed that feature."

Not even BBC were like this. How they were described was being flat headed behind but not round headed. Can't say much about CWC but Yamnaya looked longer headed but with a broadness(not roundness) to it.

I once had seen some pre Circassian, early Iron AGE Northwest Caucasus reconstructions too but unfortunately can't find them anymore. Some(some other not) of the EHG reconstructions do however look a quite rounbdheaded

I use Soares 2009's mutation rate to estimate the age of mtDNA haplogroups. Essentially all European mtDNA falls under clades that get age estimates under 10,000 years old. So what this means is Soares 2009's age estimator suggests expansions/migrations that occurred less than 10,000 years old formed the modern European mtDNA gene pool.

Sorry man the Italian refiuim didn't leave any big mark on modern European mtDNA. The important expansions all occurred after the Paleolithic. Geneticists 10 years ago predicted that most important expansions occurred in the during the Last Glacial Maximum but most of their predictions have been proven to be wrong, it's time you understand this.

The same goes for R1b P312. It's time you accept the facts. R1b P312 didn't expand in the Paleolithic, it didn't expand in the Neolithic, it expanded with Bell Beaker and originated in Eastern Europe.

First of all, when did I say that the "Italian Refugium" was in Palaeolithic? Of course Villabruna (R1b1*), 14000 years ago, was in Late Palaeolithic, but I have always said that the expansion from the "Italian Refugium" happened after the Younger Dryas. Many of you thought that Villabruna was an isolated haplotype, but that isn't my opinion: having found a sample then and there does mean that there was a tribe of R1b1, and the R1b1 found from Mathieson in the Balkans after the Younger Drysa demonstrate that.The R-V88 (V35-) found in Iberia 7100 years ago came very likely from Italy with the migration described from Zilhao, and all your friends should stop to say that R1b1 came from Middle East, where it hasn't been found in the aDNA anywhere.Of course I think that the R1b of Samara (only some subclades) came from Italy or Western Europe (and that R1 (b and a) was the hg of the European hunter-gatherers is thought also from Mathieson.I have only some doubt if my R1b1a2-L23-Z2110-FGC24408, found also in an Armenian, is old in Italy or come during the Middle Ages from Caucasus with the German invasions: it is possible and I am open to any proof.Of course I don't think that R-L51 has ever been in Eastern Europe, where it is at 0% now, whereas it is massive in Italy and Western Europe.About the mt-s, already Francalacci et al. demontrated that U5b3 was born in Italy, and many other hgs was born here or in Western Europe. Also Mathieson says that mt K1 was with R1 amongst the WHG etc etc. I don't speak of the J2a1 of 11000 years ago found in Sardinia and much more. Let that your friends test Italy like all the other European countries and we'll speak again.

So on the subject of the original post I'd just point out that this aridification also coincided with the northernmost expansion of Eurasian boreal forests. What was a crisis for steppe peoples like Indo-Europeans was an opportunity for northern forest peoples like Uralics.

L51 can not come from Yamnaya, they are extremely well sampled and uniformly downstream on the Z2103 branch. The Yamnaya culture is not ancestral to any European populations except those carrying Z2103. Yamnaya and the R1b in Beakers share a common paternal ancestor who existed in a culture which predated the existence of either culture. Where and when this common ancestor existed is an unknown but the closest y dna lines to it so far have come from Baltic WHGs. Interestingly the Rathlin Beakers also show an increased affinity to the Baltic. The significance of ruling out the Yamnaya as the direct ancestor of West European R1b means that the version of the Steppe hypothesis promoted by Gimbustas or Anthony is false and needs to be adjusted.

More Yamnaya data is supposedly on the way.As far as where PIE comes from, Yamnaya is definitely not PIE it's LPIE, or a big part of it.Yamnaya might have gotten IE from the steppe groups Khavasomething or another one.I guess that's what the Reich team is working on now.

If not the steppe, and it's a big if, it would be the Caucasus or around there.That's the main alternative to the Kurgan theory. Some people still beat up on Renfrew's Neolithic model but that's too early and is beating a dead horse.

It doesn't matter where R1b1 is from. What matters is where R1b M269, R1b L23, R1b L151, and R1b P312 are from. And everything so far points to Eastern Europe as their place of origin.

@Gioiello,"Of course I don't think that R-L51 has ever been in Eastern Europe, where it is at 0% now, whereas it is massive in Italy and Western Europe."

That's because sometimes modern DNA can't tell much about ancient origins. Czechs, Lithuanians, Russians, etc. aren't representative of all the people who lived in Eastern Europe 5,000 years ago.

The ethnogensis of modern Eastern European nations can probably ultimately be traced back to Corded Ware. There were people other than Corded Ware living in Eastern Europe at that time who left a smaller legacy. Just because their legacy can't be seen in modern Eastern Europeans doesn't mean they didn't live in Eastern Europe 4,600 years ago.

@Romulus,

R1b P312 need not originate in Yamnaya in order to have originated in the Steppe. And Yamnaya hasn't been thoroughly sampled, only Yamnaya's far eastern edge has been sampled.

@Gioiello,"About the mt-s, already Francalacci et al. demontrated that U5b3 was born in Italy, and many other hgs was born here or in Western Europe. Also Mathieson says that mt K1 was with R1 amongst the WHG etc etc."

U5b3 could have definitely originated in Italy. All I was saying is that the theories about modern European mtDNA decending mostly from Ice age Refugiums have been proven to be wrong. And it's time you understand that, it's time you understand how important the Neolithic migration from Anatolia and later migrations are to European's origins.

My Turkish friend, Onur Dincer, said that you aren't Sam Huelsen as I thought you were, thus it seems that he knows you very well, and perhaps you have something to do with Anatolia. When you speak with me you know for certain who I am, and my data: R1b1a2-L23-Z2110-FGC24408, K1a1b1e.If you have something to do with Anatolia, you should know what I wrote infinite times, not only that people of to-day has a little to do with "Turks", even though they speak Turkish, but that Old Anatolia, the Northern part from where some agriculturalists migrated to Europe, has a little or nothing to do with Middle East and Iran before that Indo-Europeans came from Southern Russia. Thus that people was very likely descendant of "European" hunter-gatherers, and, in spite of the deep tests on aDNA, no old R1b has been found there, thus my theory stands, till at least Tyrrhenian Italy will be tested at least how much Old Anatolia.

"The Yamnaya culture is not ancestral to any European populations except those carrying Z2103. Yamnaya and the R1b in Beakers share a common paternal ancestor who existed in a culture which predated the existence of either culture. Where and when this common ancestor existed is an unknown but the closest y dna lines to it so far have come from Baltic WHGs. Interestingly the Rathlin Beakers also show an increased affinity to the Baltic."

Indeed interesting. The recent paper from Scandinavian Mesoliths also showed several samples of y-dna I2 with (extra) markers otherwise found in R1a.

"The significance of ruling out the Yamnaya as the direct ancestor of West European R1b means that the version of the Steppe hypothesis promoted by Gimbustas or Anthony is false and needs to be adjusted."

No doubt. I've long been claiming that Davidskis conclusion about a bifurication between R1a and R1b in "eastern Europe" is close to correct.

Move the common area of origin to the lands between the river-mounds of the southern Baltic and all the involved facts - as of climatology, biotopy, archaeology, lingustics, litterature, legends and oral traditions - starts to concur.

Which leaves Pomeria, Holstein and Scania to be a central spots. The oldest known oxes found inside human settlements are from this area, dated 11.000+ years BP.

Which seem to confirm an early relationship between cattle-farming, lactose-persistance and the speciation and success of y-dna R1a and R1b.

So was R1b L51 Corded Ware or did they migrate up the Danube from Southern Romania ? Or where they displaced by Corded Ware in Southwestern Ukraine and Southeastern Poland basically Galicia and then migrated towards the South to settle near Csepel ? And from there migrated up the Danube and down the Elbe ?

If Steppe people were displaced by the Kiloyear Events then surely the Farmers also took to the Wagon ? Did this maybe point towards some I2a and G2a migration into the Balkans from West of the Dnieper that shared similarities with the Steppe Material Cultures but were not Indo-European Linguistically ?

With the Balkan peoples bulking up by using specialused weapons and starting to use fortification around their hilltops did it not force Steppe people to rather migrate along the Northern Carpathians into undefended territories ?

No coincidence. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bond_event, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4.2_kiloyear_event, and http://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/aryans-dna-genetics-archaeology-4765740/

@Ric Hern: If R1b L51 were Corded Ware why did they adopt Beaker Culture while R1a did not ?Thick forests unsuitable for nomadism, and cultural adaptation.

@Joshua JonathanYep, the 4.2 event timing fits too well to be a coincidence.I actually think the CW presence suggest the respective area being forest-steppe prior to the event (and something else after).

Chad: Rarecoal in the Irish paper said likely straight from Germany with no Iberian input as well.

Me: I can't see any mention of rarecoal in Cassidy et al 2016, the Irish paper, just using a find function on the text for the words "rarecoal" and "rare". "Allele sharing" is in the supplement, but only in the context of f statistics, not rare alleles. Can you point me to it or quote it?

Can anyone else point me to where Cassidy 2016 used rarecoal on the Rathlin samples, if you can remember seeing it?

Yeah, I knew they used rarecoal in Schiffels 2016, but just to distinguish between IRC Spain+General Northern Europe like signals in ancient Iron Age Celts vs Germanic (Netherlands+Denmark) signals in Anglo-Saxons. Not relating to use of rarecoal for different Neolithic signals in Rathlin Bronze Age.

It still does not make sense. If R1b L51 were part of the Corded Ware people which was Dominated by R1a and migrated with them why were there no R1a samples found among Bell Beaker Cultural remains ?

This only tells me that R1b L51 was part of a different migration either earlier or using a different route.

I think the migration of Repin/Afanasevo to the East happened at plus minus the same time that R1b L51 migrated to the West which was earlier than the Yamnaya and Corded Ware expansions maybe correlating with the 5.9 Kiloyear Event...

I was more referring to the fact that pastoralism cannot develop without farming. Pastoralism had also developed west of the steppe c. 4000 BC, in Hungary, Poland, etc, although MNE genetically. Groups like Baden, GAC, etc bred cattle and were more mobile than earlier groups. On the other hand, it seems that until 3300 BC, groups on the steppe still hunted and fished rather than had domesticates, although there are obvious signs of interaction with Balkan groups, and some cattle bones, perhaps trading. This changes with the appearance of Yamnaya, when the steppe economy can be clearly seen to be pastoral. As the genetic evidence suggests, this is not due to an impact from Balkan -MNE groups but from one which is CHG/ EHG.

As for what I think for L51, nothing more than what most might swing between via CWC or via Yamnaya Hungary.

In any case, what you get from that (haplotypes) should help you detect genealogical relationships. Both haplotypes and rare alleles were mentioned by Reich @SMBE as means of getting a more precise picture of population histories than f-statistics.

How can you say that Pastoralism can not develope without farming ? I think the early Texas Ranchers, Saami and the Masai etc. will differ with you. Farming is not essential for the development of pastoralism...

In fact a Salt Miner could have greater success with domesticating animals. Grazing Animals can hardly resist Mineral deposits which is usually hard to come by...That is how game farmers managed to semi-domesticate their Antelope.

Btw, Martiniano 2017 preprint just published today - http://journals.plos.org/plosgenetics/article?id=10.1371/journal.pgen.1006852 - "The population genomics of archaeological transition in west Iberia: Investigation of ancient substructure using imputation and haplotype-based methods".

I will have a look to see if anything new, as I remember there were some missing supplement info on the preprint.

(The last, btw, seems to reconfirms patterns seen in some of Davidski's fine scale European unlinked PCA with ancients projected on - "Hungarian EBA sample from Vatya was now in the same population as present-day Polish and Belorussian. The Hungarian Iron Age sample is now placed in the same population as a subset of Bulgarian, Georgian and Armenian. This sample is described as pre-Scythian (Gamba et al., 2014) and belonging to the Mezocsat culture, which has been associated with the Cimmerians, which in turn have probably originated in the Pontic Steppe and expanded via Caucasus/Balkans towards Hungary. The Hungarian BR2 and the Bell Beaker from Czech Republic (RISE569) is included in the same population as present-day Hungarians.". Of course, RISE569 is one of the Early Slavic samples as we found after Mathieson 2017?)...

Paper does actually include the values for Chromopainter coancestry for populations, but in a much more extensive format than Cassidy 2016. What they do is give the individual sample coancestry recipients in Table S9. So we can use this to calculate population means (and medians when I work out how to do it).

Quick plot of some of these: http://imgur.com/a/j7mIw

(This is mean, not median, may be thrown off a little by outlying high and low values).

Used hunter-gatherers because it's pretty clear which label corresponds to which sample (not because they necessarily show strongest patterns).So in those, a little like you'd expect, there is an excess of mean Motala12 donation into Northeast Europeans relative to Western WHG donation, particularly pronounced in relation to the La Brana scores. Greatest excess of Motala12 donation to Finnish.

(Narva / Kunda / KO1 would probably be more useful for NE Europe, but not sure if there are any here. KO1 may be a sample marked in this as 18.1_BGI_WG but not so sure - http://imgur.com/a/jf2r0).

At the same time, looks to be an excess of La Brana donation into Western European populations - most donation into English, French, but most excess of donation relative to Motala12 into Spanish and Basque.

Finally excess of Loschbour relative to La Brana / Motala12 looks to be highest in the GermanyAustria population.

Many of the ancients are not so clearly labeled though, so it's a little hard to work out what many of the samples and populations various RISExxx actually are. I might try and work out which is which, interested in any are the Yamnaya.

(Note, these do involve some degree of imputation to get around the coverage and this is discussed more in the paper. So hopefully imputation is not biased at all. Not sure about imputation for Han and Yoruba as recipient here).

"How can you say that Pastoralism can not develope without farming ? I think the early Texas Ranchers, Saami and the Masai etc. will differ with you. Farming is not essential for the development of pastoralism..."

Correct. Trapping is.

Trapping was the main source of animal food to the "gatherers" that survived an thrived during the Palelolithic and Mesolithic. Using various nets and cage-traps to trap fish. Traps and snares could catch birds and hares, larger wall-structures combined with fall-graves would trap elk-, deer- and reindeer. Combined with hunting-dogs the harvest could be planty.

From the zoologic knowledge following effective trapping there's a small step towards taming and/or herding. Your example with the salt-stones is a great example of that practice. Besides, as the reletive time with certain species evolves the taming and domesticing of their kids, lambs, calves and puppies are nothing but child-stuff.

Let's not forget that the most challenging of them, the wolf puppies, were domesticated already 30.000+ years ago. Sculls from distinct dog-races dated to the late Plaelithic actually proves an old suspicion - that even the Paleolithic Europeans domesticated the most useful of the animals of their time. What then happened - from the paleolithic/mesolithic transition - became a continuum from an old, ongoing tradition of selected breeding and due testing/training of wolf-dogs and dogs - electing and breeding on lines that evolved into the unbelievable multitude of the post-wolves today certified as specific "dog-breeds".

A closer look at the genetic map of the wild boar and their domesticated cousines is also brining some new clues about the process of animal domestication:

"Hey! Where's all that R1b L51 in Spain before the Bronze Age? Keep it up. You're as whacked on R1b as OM. At least he must've finally got it. You, not so much".

Actually L51 is rare in Iberia also to-day, and in the map that Argiedude and me did on the R-L51-PF7589 diffusion in Europe, Iberia had the same percentage of the countries Eastward Italy: 0,3%, against the highest percentage in Italy and less Northward till the Isles. I supposed a migration of some R-L51 from Italy to Iberia because in R-L51 map done from Richard Rocca there was some percentage in Iberia just where happened the Zilhao migration from Italy of 7500 years ago, but the core of R-L51 is Italy and after Switzerland, Germany till the Isles.Also in the last paper of Martiniano et al. the 3 R1b found in Portugal demonstrate a little steppe intake and very low to zero the Basques who are pretty all R1b haplotype.You are only a buffoon, as your friends.